TNW Creations Ranked Top 15 Military Veteran Digital Marketing Agency in the United States for 2023 Read More


The U.S. Small Business Administration Spotlight features TNW Creations' CEO Erin LaVaux Quarles Read More


Editorial Review: Wix 2011 - 2022

Our Agency has been in web development since 1995. We've utilized a myriad of platforms and web hosts for the last two plus decades, including the cloud based platform Wix since 2011.

What we once viewed as a valuable resource for small business owners to navigate a user friendly interface on their own after we built the site - has since become a variable daily disappointment of issues and over-inflated costs. After repeated catastrophic issues resulting in staff overtime and financial losses with the Wix platform, we placed a Wix Waiver on our website in August 2019 to warn of the many errors clients were seeing across the cloud based platform.

 

By June 2020, after a year of struggling in vain for Wix to resolve repeated errors with client websites, our agency chose to actively avoid Wix website projects and began turning Wix clients away to our preferred Wix Partners.

 

Another year went by as we held on to hope that Wix would recover but ultimately, we made the decision as an agency to discontinue design and development for Wix websites and only accept SEO requests for Wix clients. In Summer 2021, we withdrew from the Wix Partner Marketplace completely.

 

By 2022, the last 2 of our remaining Wix clients had made the decision to rebuild their websites on other platforms. We continued to remain busy while only accepting new clients and projects on other platforms.

Changed experience with Wix from Summer 2019 to Present:

  • Poor Speeds and Server Performance - Overburdened servers of nearly 300,000 sites per server results in poor server performance. Websites are pre-loaded with scripts for apps and fonts that have never been enabled. A large number of connected fonts will increase loading time. If you look at the code of any given Wix website, you will see hundreds of font scripts pre-embedded. This overzealous script padding coupled with the overloaded servers results in reduced SEO and performance ratings, poor mobile experience and higher bouncerates.
  • Overpriced compared to competitor platforms - Extra cost would be acceptable if websites were faster and more reliable - the least expensive plan we see is $27. per month base comes with barebones features - for example, you will need to upgrade for each feature like chat, accepting payments, hosting videos, email accounts, to run a business site and not personal, etc. Price and offers within each plan fluctuates per month and per user as Wix seems to implement special pricing for customers that may or may not be in the client's best interest. It is hard to know what is included for what price from month to month.
  • Unstable platform - weekly errors, broken functions, loose drifting elements. Wix Partners report multiple high performance functioning errors on a daily basis.
  • Email Issues - ICANN Domain Contact email confirmation is frequently sent to previous domain owners despite the domain having been transferred. Recently, we received emails to confirm multiple domains we transferred 2 years ago. Frequent error emails triggered for Contributors regarding Facebook Campaigns, Forums or other apps that are not on their website.
  • HIPAA Issues - Wix contributors often receive copies and notifications of private messages through the website even when turning notifications off and this is especially concerning for medical, physical therapy and mental health websites with HIPAA regulations in place.
  • Poor Customer Support - Wix was one of the first Web Hosts to operate without a Customer Support phone number. When opening a support ticket, expect to receive nonsensical responses from support agents who either do not understand your question or do not speak the same language you do. I suspect the entire support system might actually be a bot network due to how vapid and inane the replies are. For one example, changing our email address on a forum profile in pre-Covid 2020 took them 6 weeks of replies and they still were unable to resolve it. This was a capability in the 90's. For Wix to not be able to change an email from the backend in 2020 was mind-blowing.

Investment & Share Outlook for Wix

 

My web development agency has been in operation since 1995. We work with all website platforms including Wix.Com though the number of Wix website projects we accepted since 2020 have been purposely lower as we find Wix to be a problematic host.

 

In 2019, our Wix builds numbered 80 that year alone but by May 2019, we began having serious issues with the Wix platform. During the New Orleans Wix Convention in which I was there as an SEO Expert, the websites returned 500 errors which meant the servers were not available. 502, 503, Crashes and disasters quickly followed. With every update, we found more and more issues. By August 2019, we had decided to make the move for the majority of our full service clients.

 

In 2020, we again reduced our number of Wix projects, this time to 10. My opinion of Wix vs other website platforms was extremely low but we did hold out hope that Wix would make a full recovery. By end of 2020, our agency left the Wix Developer's feedback group because it was clear to me that Wix was not taking our reports seriously.

 

In 2021, we only accepted 2 Wix projects due to the concern for lost time and money involved in Wix builds. The average Wix development for a basic website is $2,500. and takes 3 times as long to complete due to constant errors and sluggish server response. We also found many Wix customers were frustrated due to the, "free to low" and "easy" advertising that brought them to Wix in the first place. During the pandemic, this frustration over pricing from Wix clients grew.  In June 2021, we withdrew from the Wix Marketplace though Wix continued to advertise our agency for months.

 

In 2022, Wix platform issues remains, heavy loading due to the default scripts and apps preloaded on every website, layout errors (floating, disappearing, glitchy elements). Slow server response when building is especially defeating. Mobile layout capabilities are the most deplorable of all platform options and overall this - Wix has inflated hosting fees to unbelievable rates again. It is my opinion that the quality does not match the price.
 

Outlook on Wix Investments

At this point, we no longer work with Wix and gratefully, all of our clients have moved on to use alternative web solutions.

 

Any website we've hosted and built with Wix has constant errors and what would typically take us a week to build, extends closer into a month duration. This type of lethargic turnaround is not effective or project effective compared to our Linux based CMS software or static websites.

 

If I were to pinpoint a greatest weakness, it would be Wix.Com's customer service. Frustrating chat bots with nonsense responses, tickets that take over a month that can end with no resolution. Second and third weakness would be overinflated prices and glitchy platform.

 

As Wix customers become fed up with a lack of customer service, website errors and high fees - I anticipate Wix will lose shares to other website platforms. Namely those with phone support lines like GoDaddy.

 

My optimism for Wix to gain and execute market share or to increase their value is low. The only exception to Wix shares rising would be their continued aggressive marketing. As they corner advertising on several social media platforms, they have become a common name to associate with websites.

 

Their commercials remind me of those snazzy late night infomercials, what they offer sounds better in an ad than in reality.

 

Currently, of our clients, less than 10% use Wix as their website solution with their chief complaint being the additional fees related to anything using, "Wix Payments" - a feature from Wix for processing payments received when processing money on a Wix website. Our clients tell us in order to accept payments on their Wix website, the client must enable "Wix Payments" which causes them to pay fees not only to their merchant processor (PayPal, Stripe, Wave, etc) but also to Wix in addition to their hosting fees. Further issue from Wix clients using Wix Payments according to reviews, is the complaint of revenue withheld by the web hosting company.

 

Additional to that, Wix stores have very clunky and outdated layouts. There are better eCommerce solutions.

 

On a positive note, Wix blog is one of the smoothest blog solutions available. However, the posts are not downloadable or movable, so if you start a blog with Wix you will want to stay with them indefinitely or risk retyping / copying / pasting each post when you move.

 

In closing, I used to love Wix as a website solution but when the platform began glitching in 2019 and the fees kept climbing, the platform became unusable to us. There are simply better options.

Summary

 

In April 2020, I wrote a frustrated post titled, "My Ongoing Wix Saga." Unfortunately, my opinion and struggles with Wix never changed. As of this time, my professional opinion of Wix.Com's future as a developer solution for business websites is poor.

 

Our agency website projects remain high, however, we are not seeing quality Wix leads or clients requesting Wix, we are seeing more Wix clients looking to leave Wix for more stable, affordable or personal customer service solutions.

 

We believe Wix is a great solution for personal use (such as a family news, weddings, baby showers, or reunions), a hobbyist (passive knitter, bird watching, babysitter, student dog walker, etc) or a social blogger.

 

For professionals, small businesses or companies and especially for medical - we recommend platforms that lend to solid web development, customer service, structure and SEO implementation. CMS or static website development are the most ideal solutions for professional websites.

TNW Creations™️and Brand Tawaci Media™️is a Web Development & Media Publishing Agency headquartered in Austin, Texas. Web Development, cybersecurity, design, clean energy web host, digital marketing.

I am a software engineer, artist and voice actress. As a child, I became part of the grassroots development for teaching my Lakhota language online. When I'm not developing and creating, you'll find me motivating a community of Indie Game Developers, play testing new games on Twitch and YouTube, developing video content, voice acting for games, acting as cultural consultant for Native vibe games, investigating and initating hostile website takedowns, and enjoying time with my family.